


Don't You Know About Santa?

by theboardwalkbody



Category: Preacher (TV)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Gen, fluff fluff fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2016-11-25
Packaged: 2018-09-02 01:36:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8646826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theboardwalkbody/pseuds/theboardwalkbody
Summary: Fiore gets a lesson about Santa Claus.





	

Emily is the one to organize events like Christmas Movie Marathons and she really does go all out - hot cocoa, blankets, the house warm and cozy and fully decorated - but she mostly sticks to the more religious aspects of the holiday and chooses movies like The Little Drummer Boy and things and it causes a lot of people not to show up, and those who do mostly do it to be polite. She is one to try and teach people it’s not about the gift giving it’s about the birth of Jesus. However, she still does let the kids enjoy the gift-giving aspect while working in the religious side, too.

Fiore is beyond confused. Like, he is completely lost. “What are they doing, DeBlanc? What does this have to do with the birth of the Lord? Why do they have a plastic evergreen tree? Why are they giving each other things? Who is that fat man with the red cap? Why are they worshiping him instead?” and DeBlanc has no real answers for him.

He’s at Emily’s for one of her Movie-thons one afternoon; he showed up early, and Emily hadn’t finished setting up yet so he’s sitting in the kitchen staring daggers at a little Santa Claus doll in the center of the table (Alice begged for it to be put there) as Emily finishes setting up the living room. He’s so intently trying to burn a whole through this figure he considers blasphemous that he doesn’t hear the pit-pat of Alice’s tiny feet as she walks up behind him. “’Scuse me, Mister Stranger, but, why are you so mad at Santa?”

He was startled and his body jerked, shaking the table enough to cause the ‘Santa’ to fall over. Fiore turned in his chair to look at the young girl and thought two things almost instantaneously: one) why had DeBlanc not come with him? DeBlanc knew he was no good at talking to the humans, especially the young ones - well, OK, any age really - and two) ‘Santa Claus’? That’s what they called him?

“What?” Fiore asked her.  
“Santa Claus,” she pointed to the fallen doll on the table. “You look like you’re mad at him. Did you get coal last year?”  
“What?” he repeated.  
“Do you not know about Santa?” she asked him, walking up to the table, climbing up on a chair, standing the Santa upright so he was staring back at Fiore, and sitting down opposite the angel disguised as a man.  
“No,” he told her, “do you worship him?”  
“Worship…” she repeated his word, “oh, no, Mister, I only worship the Lord, like Mama says. Go to church every Sunday, like we’re s’possed to.”  
He cocked his head slightly, confused. “Then who’s that?” he motioned toward the Santa.  
“Santa Claus!” she said excitedly. “He brings good boys and girls presents on Jesus’s birthday.”  
“Why?” Fiore questioned.  
She thought for a moment. “Um. I think… I think maybe… because we’re good! Yeah, we’re good, so we get presents for being good all year long, and Jesus’ birthday is the most special day, so that’s why Santa comes then. To give good kids presents for being good on the best special day!” she smiled, seeming pleased with her answer.  
Fiore considered this. “You said coal…”  
“Coal is what the bad people get instead of presents. If you weren’t nice or if you sinned or something” she told him.  
“You think I would get coal?” he took the accusation of being called bad by a child slightly too personally and his voice was raised slightly as he asked his question.  
Alice sat back in her seat slightly, “no, no! Um, you just looked mad at Santa is all.”

There was silence for a moment and Alice’s demeanor became mousy. She had made the stranger mad and she was a little scared of what would happen next, but when he turned his attention away from her and resumed staring at the Santa statue (this time with less loathing in his eyes) she timidly asked, “Have you never gotten a present from Santa before? Is that why you’re mad at him?”  
“No, I’ve not,” Fiore answered.  
“Oh… I’m sorry.” Alice said. 

There was silence again as Fiore sat fixed in his position at the table. Alice quietly slid off the chair and darted into her room, after several minutes she returned to the kitchen with her hands behind her back.

“Hey, Mister,” she said, getting his attention. Fiore turned and looked at her. “I found this in my room,” she pulled a lumpy object covered in a dirty, wrinkled t-shirt with a floral pattern on it out from behind her back and held it out to him.  
“Santa must have left it at my house by mistake! See, there’s a letter on it for you!” 

Fiore reached out and took the lump from the child’s hands. Turns out there was a note at the top, scribbled on an uncolored page from a coloring book, and in almost illegible handwriting it said, “Sorry I missed your house. Here is your present. Love SANTA”.

“Well go on, Mister, unwrap it! What did Santa get you?” Alice asked, growing impatient. 

Fiore looked at her then back to the object in his hands and plucked the shirt off of the object hidden beneath. A ratty teddy bear fell from the dirty cloth, missing an eye, a patch of duck-pattern cloth sewn over the back to keep the stuffing in, and a tear in a seem where some stuffing was poking out. Fiore stared at the raggedy thing.

“His name’s Chip. Santa must have known you would be here and left him for me to give you. You will take care of him wont you?” Alice asked, suddenly worried she may have made a mistake trusting this stranger with the raggedy bear.

Fiore looked at her intently, trying to figure her out.

“Won’t you?” she asked again.

He nodded and she smiled brightly.

“Good! Now, we have to make sure Santa won’t miss your house again! Here,” she climbed back up on the chair and sat on her knees so she could lean over the table and pulling a crayon and another piece of coloring book paper from her pocket she pushed it across to Fiore, “write your name and your address on this and I’ll send it to him in the mail. He’ll get it at the North Pole, there’s still time. Make sure you write it clear and neat that way he can read it, You must have wrote it too sloppy last time, or maybe the mail man lost it on accident. Go on, write it!”  
Fiore hesitantly reached across the table and grabbed the paper and crayon. He found himself carefully writing his name and address on the paper like the girl had asked. When he was finished she eagerly grabbed it from him and read it, “FIORE - HEAVEN,”.

“F…Fi… Fi-o-re.” she tried to sound it out, pronouncing it like F-eye-o-ray.  
“Fiore.” he corrected her.  
“Fiore,” she repeated, then looked back down at his address and read, “Heaven… YOU’RE FROM HEAVEN? No you’re not!”  
“I am.” he defended.  
Alice gasped. “Like…” she pointed upward.  
“Yes, Heaven.” he told her, though her pointing upward didn’t really mean anything considering Heaven wasn’t on the same plane of existence and wasn’t really in any direction in particular, but he didn’t feel like explaining the concept to a human.  
“Are you an… angel?” she whispered.  
“Yes.” he answered and then thought ‘DeBlanc would kill me for telling this human that.’  
“Where are your wings? Your halo? Are they hiding? Are you undercover? Do you know Jesus?” she asked rapidly. 

He didn’t know which to answer first so all he replied with was, “yes” and let her do with that as she wished. He shouldn’t even have told her what he was.

“Oh my Goodness!” she whispered but full of excitement.  
“It’s supposed to be a secret,” he told her.  
“Oh, right, undercover,” she repeated. “Don’t worry - I won’t tell,” she smiled.  
“Thank you,” he nodded.

“Alice!” Emily called from the other room, “Ms. Flynt is here, grab your coat and let’s go.”  
“Sorry, Mister Fiore, I’ve gotta go to Ms. Flynt’s house now. Are you still mad at Santa? Don’t be mad at him. He probably didn’t know how to deliver presents to Heaven, it’s so far away and all. You’re not mad, right?”

Fiore looked over at the Santa doll, still smiling away with it’s rosy red cheeks and nose. He looked back at Alice and shook his head. 

She smiled, “good!”  
“Alice, let’s go!” Emily called again.  
“You’ll take good care of Chip, won’t you? He’s fragile.” she asked.

Fiore looked down at his lap where the bear still sat from when she’d given it to him, gave him a gentle pat on the head and nodded at her, a soft smile on his face.

“Oh, thank you!” she beamed and ran up to him and hugged his side, as it was all she could reach from her short height and his position in the chair.  
“ALICE, NOW!” Emily called a third time.  
“I gotta go. Bye Mister Fiore! Bye Chip!” Before she turned away and sprinted to the door she whispered in the raggedy bear’s ear, “don’t worry, Chip, the angel is gonna take care of you now” and placed a kiss on it’s fuzzy cheek. 

Fiore allowed himself a smile as he watched the girl bound across the room and out the door to the other room to meet her mother, brothers, and sitter. He looked down again at the bear and squeezed it against him.

Emily questioned why he was holding her daughter’s old bear when she’d entered the room after saying goodbye to her kids as the sitter was going to watch them for the duration of the movie-thon. Fiore told her it was a gift from Santa Claus. Emily, a bit confused, decided not to even ask any more questions and wondered why, out of the two “agents” that bothered to show up it was the weirder of the two and cursed that he had shown up so early.

Later that evening when he’d headed back to the motel room DeBlanc also questioned him about the raggedy bear.

“What’s that?” Deblanc asked.  
“Chip.” Fiore told him.  
“Chip?” DeBlanc repeated.  
“The girl gave him to me. Or Santa Claus. I don’t understand, really. I think it was her. Said I’d take care of it.” Fiore explained.

DeBlanc watched him, with a mixture of amusement and fondness, as he tucked the old bear gently into their suitcase.


End file.
